


m.

by rosaecae



Series: Augmented Reality [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Ian, Canon Compliant, Canon Timeline, Character Study, Gap Filler, Idk how to tag things, M/M, Prose Poem, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, season 4, season 5, season 6, season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-19 21:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11322078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosaecae/pseuds/rosaecae
Summary: You’re struck dumb when he’s near you. You chase the high, because he is an enigma. He is your enigma, the one you dedicate your life to solving.You cling to the end of his every word, and you are unblinking, unshaken in the shriek of his storm siren.You don’t take shelter. He whips around you. He’s a hurricane, and you shut your eyes and savor the chill.





	m.

**Author's Note:**

> i finally wrote something from ian's POV, someone give me a medal.  
> (reminder that this is not what i think of mickey, or even an accurate analysis of mickey, but what i think ian thought of mickey, just like i. was what mickey thought of ian)

He is your schoolboy crush. He is guts and glory and the Great Experiment. He is the American dream. Your dream. He’s a gunshot in the early morning. He’s at home in your home, but starkly alone. 

Your heart beats for him from the first moment.

You count the minutes on your fingers, from him to him to him. 

You’re struck dumb when he’s near you. You chase the high, because he is an enigma. He is your enigma, the one you dedicate your life to solving. 

You cling to the end of his every word, and you are unblinking, unshaken in the shriek of his storm siren. 

You don’t take shelter. He whips around you. He’s a hurricane, and you shut your eyes and savor the chill.

You dare to say the things you think, still. You’d say anything for the twitch of his lips alone. 

You want to see his eyes. You want to memorize the ripple of his thoughts. He won’t look at you, straight-on, though, and it drives you half-mad. 

But somehow, you find comfort in his gravel voice. In the way he looks at you, when you’re alone, like he feels that fluttering hunger, too. 

You find yourself thinking: what else? He’s leading a double life; he’s horrendously good at it. You seek to uncover his secret identity. To peel away his mask. There’s a chip in the granite, already. 

And from the first moment, from the first moment, your heart beats for him.

* * *

 

You’ve been dreaming about him for months. Smiling at the little red X’s on your calendar. You say it’s just to pass the time. You don’t say until what.

Your love for him is different, under the summer moon. 

He is everything you fear, but you don’t fear him.

He is a downpour from a blue sky. He is a warm winter day. He is a lily at dusk.

He is, he is rare. He is unbreakable. Untouchable. Took a bullet for you, and stands here still. He doesn’t budge, so easy.

Neither do you.

You can’t seem to swallow your smile. You can’t seem to tear yourself away, away from his feral eyes. 

You are children of tragedy, unwanted, but your smile, his smile, they have never felt so free.

You catch him looking at you like you imagine he does, when your attention is elsewhere. You thought it was just a lofty hope. 

He is your childhood. He is the rust on the fence and the brown tips of the grass, he is the shifted edge. He doesn’t budge, so easy.

Neither do you.

* * *

 

You don’t expect him to come back. But he surprises you. He seems truly fond of doing so. 

He’s got a new flame in his eyes; but, then, so do you. 

You’ve grown, since he’s been gone. Grown calloused, towards everything. Even him, to some extent. 

You only want him to want you, this time around. You’re vindictive, when you’re not the only one. 

You resolve to make him notice you. You aren’t the sweet, gullible kid you once were, you think. He needs to know that. You’re on level playing ground, you think. 

You think.

You challenge the notion that you can see other people.

You win.

You laugh through his possessiveness. He pulls you against the wall of the back alley and you forget your collective, flimsy infidelity. 

You pin his bruised knuckles to the bricks and he gasps through your response.

You’re his, you know.

He tells you so, wordlessly, raggedly.

You’re mine, you know?

You pound on his barricades, relentlessly, immune to his arsenal, until he breaks.

You shove, and he shoves back.

His lips are velvet, and your towering ego comes tumbling down.

You kiss him into his mattress, later, finally, and every breath you release is a sigh of relief, every inhale a gasp for air.

It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before, with him. It always is. He is the hitch in your speech and the ache in your gut. He is the sting of your collarbone, the racing of your heart.

You aren’t used to his fingers in your hair, and the taste of your name on his lips. 

You think, if you had one wish, you’d put off tomorrow forever, so you could have him here, biting your bottom lip, pressed against you, until the end of time.

* * *

 

You see him again, in a later phase of the nightmare. The boy you knew. The Great Experiment. The American dream. He’s lifeless, now.

Blank stare. He won’t look at you. He won’t look at you. If he’d just fucking look at you.

It isn’t fair, it isn’t fucking fair, that he holds the core of your very being in the palm of his hand, and you can’t even hold his gaze.

Your anger, you don’t know what to do with it. It spreads, like poison, through your thoughts, seeps into your saliva, pours into your words. You don’t know what you hate so much. You don’t know what’s causing the tornado between your temples. You don’t know if it’s the memories, you don’t know if it’s the freezing cold. You don’t know if it’s him or his blood. Him or the world.

It’s always been him against the world. They’ve never been one, before.

You thought, you thought,  _ you thought _ he was unbreakable.

You want him to trust you. Why can’t he just trust you? Why doesn’t he understand that you love him?

You’d ask him to run away with you. If he’d only look at you.

It takes three staccato impulses, three new blooming bruises, to provide you with an answer to your unspoken question.

You breathe shakily against the gravel, after a glassy minute. You would barely find it in yourself to rise again, if not for the constant, rushing buzz in your chest.

You grip your pillow that night, and sob to the beat of your family’s muted celebration. The agonizing pulse beneath your skin is nothing compared to the pounding of your heart; you feel it in your teeth. You feel it in the veins of your wrists and the nape of your neck.

You love him, but you don’t understand him, your enigma. Your life’s work. You need people, you need words. You need something, some closure, some confirmation that he just doesn’t love you back, some proof that none of it mattered to him. Some solid evidence that every feeling, every thought, every hope, was entirely one-sided. That he is a singularly fantastic liar. To dissuade your persistence.

Your enigma. You wish to be an enigma, too.

* * *

 

You are the smoke, now. Slipping through the cracks, surrendering to the stars when the world is through with you for the night. 

You’ve dissolved completely, when he finds you again. Your hearing crackles, and every bit of spite you’ve held onto pools on the tip your tongue. Your vision hones in, dead-set. 

You’re shaken out of who you’ve become. 

You don’t know what to do, with him, with the only one who knows you. Who knew you. You are the smoke, now.

You are the smoke. 

You don’t know who you were before you were the smoke.

You surround him. Set to choke him out. 

The twitch in your fingers barely betrays you. 

You’re doing this to punish him. 

You know you left him wanting more.

Your eyes can’t seem to focus on him, now, now that he’s this close. Is he the same person? Who is he? Who is it, rigid beneath you?

It’s him; he smashed your fucking heart. You’re remembering now, now that his smell drifts your way, now that the rasp of his voice rattles through your bones. 

You stay cold; you treat him like nothing, you treat him like he isn’t the reason your heart beats in your throat, like he isn’t the inferno that sent you floating to the treetops.

You’ve become some sort of sadist, unwittingly. You want to make him beg. You want to make his vision cloud, his hearing cut out. You want to paralyze him.

He smashed your fucking heart. Sure.

But then, but then, he saves your life, doesn’t he? Comes back to you, eyes lowered, desperate for you?

You won’t admit to yourself how much you’ve thought about him. You won’t admit to yourself that you’ve been teetering on the edge, finger hovering over self-destruct. 

You’re free, you think. You’ve been floating on the winter wind. Free. The smoke. 

Except, you’ve been cold, to the core. 

Maybe you’re dying off. Spreading thin.

He changes that. He always does. 

When you see him, again, in the light of morning, newly devoted, the domineering edge of your shield lowers, if only for a second.

He’s permeated the air you breathe, again, in a matter of hours.

He’s beautiful, in his own biting, unapologetic way. You’ve always known so.

You’ve been drifting, but your vision hones in. Dead-set. 

He prefers the dusk, still, but you’ve called his bluff. 

He’s yours, you know.

You tell him so, wordlessly, open-mouthed.

You’re mine, you know?

He tastes the same as he always did.

Maybe you swim in the way he’s choosing you, more and more. 

Maybe you love him, still.

Maybe you’re done hiding it.

* * *

 

Your thoughts don’t mean, don’t mean anything.

Your head’s underwater, his words a bubbling rush, every syllable a piercing migraine.

And your thoughts don’t mean anything.

* * *

 

The water beats down on your back, and his fingers drift over your skin. 

No one sees this side of him. No one sees the chaste press of his lips to your jaw. No one sees the protective energy that buzzes within him. 

Even you didn’t, for a time. 

You stay, under the steam, for an hour, to melt away a two-week slumber. He doesn’t leave you.

He’s been there. He doesn’t understand, and neither do you, but he’s been there. 

It’s just a phase. Just a temporary malfunction. Just a stress-induced breakdown. Everything’s so new, you see? His gaze, in public. His smile, out in the open. Just stress.

You’re feeling stronger, now. Unsteady on your own feet, but you’re seeing in color. 

He doesn’t say much. He still looks at you like he’s worried you’ll waste away. You’ve never seen that, before. You feel as if you’ve broken him, a bit. Scared him out of himself. 

But he’s stayed beside you, throughout the day, into the night. Ran his fingers through your hair. Kissed the base of your neck. Granite, he’s fucking unbreakable. Chipped, but steady. Your vision is still blurry, but you press your lips to his for the first time since rock bottom. He pulls you close, and you can feel the shake of his breath on your skin. His eyes are red. The stream above you blurs emotion and renewal. 

You love him, and you are certain, more certain than you have ever been, that he loves you, too.

* * *

 

You’ve settled, with him. You are not the whirlwind you once were, together. You kiss his son every morning, smile against his skin every night. 

You paint a picture of your future. You adore him, in every scenario. In the now, in the soon, in the far away.

The happiness leaves your heart racing. 

The white flashes flare, every so often, at first leaving no trace of their existence but the metallic taste in the back of your mouth. 

You solve problems. You see problems, you feel problems, and you solve them. 

Your life, your actions, when he’s not around you, they’re impressionistic. An idea. A hypothesis. What if? 

It seeps, slowly, into your family, too. 

Sometimes, sometimes you see a twinge in his eyes, when you’re at the height of yourself, that makes you wonder what it is he sees. Wonder if you’re really on the same page. 

But God, how he looks at you. He hides it less and less, and you live in spite of all the years you never saw his smile. Ninety degree sun can’t hope to compare.

You want every bit of him; the trust of his wife, the love of his child. The privilege of his laugh. The callous of his speech.

You want him, your other half, forever.

* * *

 

The rush, the rush, the agitated river, you thought he loved you. You thought he loved all of you.

The rush, you thought you were helping. Thought you were doing what you could, just like him.

He holds you at arm’s length, and you’re furious at the fear, at the betrayal in his eyes.

It’s you. It’s you. Why can’t he see that it’s you, just like it’s always been?

He was the last one left on your side, and now he’s tumbling across the line, into enemy territory.

He’s turned on you.

He looks at you like you used to look at her. Her, your worst nightmare. Your mirror image, everyone says.

But you are not her. You are the smoke.

* * *

 

You’re embarrassed to look him in the eye, anymore. 

It’s all too much, too much, to be so helpless.

You just want some fucking control, again.

He’s actualized. He looks stronger, he looks more fragile, than he ever has. Your eyes burn, when you look at him like this, pleading with you in broad daylight.

He was your furious love. Your tumultuous storm. He was the sound of rain on the roof, he was your breath in the winter quiet. He was stolen glances. He was swallowed fire. 

Your furious love has been calmed, for your own good. Your furious love is content in his pity.

Bleary-eyed. You can’t look at him.

The only thing you feel is the dull rush of your own blood.

He tells you he loves you and you demand retribution.

He isn’t him anymore, and it’s your fault. You know it.

You wonder if you were only in love with the chase.

No. No. You love him. You hate yourself. You love him. 

He shouldn’t have to love you like this.

You think this is best.

You’re sick of being an anchor in his sea. You, you’ve clipped his wings. Chained him to the fucking radiator. 

You are the water to his flame. You are the cloud to his sun. You are, you are the silence to his vow. 

He shouldn’t have to love you like this.

* * *

 

You feel your own mistake the second he's dragged away from you.

* * *

 

You didn’t mean for it to go this far. You stare down at the water and you see his face behind the glass. He was your hope. He was your strength. Granite. 

It wasn’t like the times before. You have no youth left, between you. You have no secrets. He loves you, still, out in the open, he loves you from behind a chain link fence, while you fought, you fight, to feel anything at all, besides the regret, besides the guilt. 

The wall between you, it cut off your air supply. Left you with the monoxide. Left your eyes to flutter shut.

And you stared at him like he was a stranger. Even with your name branded on his skin, you hid behind yourself, behind your excuses, behind the glaze of your eyes. Cruel.

You avoid your problems. Like you always do. But, before, there was always some promise of equilibrium. There was always some shore to look towards. You’re treading in something endless, now.

But you’ve lost him. And you’ve lost you. And you’ve lost it.

You’ve lost your sight, your heart. You’ve lost your breath.

You stare down at the water and you see yourself, your tranquil self. Your hollow self. 

You are the Great Experiment. You are the American dream.

And you, you hate yourself, you useless, wretched creature.

* * *

 

You use everything he was, everything you asked him to revert to, at the end, against him.

Excuses, excuses.

You said you wanted him. Him. You still do. You pretend you don’t. Easier that way.

And you, you think about him every day. You don’t want to. You want to erase him. You want to erase what you’ve done, the natural disaster you’ve created. You don’t, you won’t, look back at the devastation you’ve caused, until it phases forward to crumble before your very eyes, and you can’t seem to tear yourself away. 

He’s changed. You don’t know what to say, to the person in front of you, after so long. You’re terrified of him, for the first time in your life. Unkempt, he’s still your obsession. All these years.

He is the consequence of your own goddamn actions. 

He’s so free. He is exactly who you begged him to be, before, before. When did the roles reverse? When did you become so disenchanted?

You try to stay mindful. Reasonable. You try to think of the other.

Your world fogs when you look at him, though. The other dims. Your family fades. Your stability, it appears paper-thin.

You never meant for him to leave, for good.

You try to refuse, try to march on, but he knows you too well. He knows what he’s doing. He knows how to hold your attention, he knows how to pull you back in. He looks at you with those eyes, those floodlight eyes, and it’s like you’re falling forward, rapidly, consciously. Your need for him pulses through every nerve ending in your body until you can’t swallow it down, can’t choke it back, can’t sweat through it for another second.

And you, irate with your relapse, are lost in the cosmic heat you’ll never find elsewhere. 

You’ll never, never love another, will you? You try, you try, but it’s only him. Him and the cold, damp nothing. Your two certainties. 

Your fingers dig into his thighs, later, after the breaking point, and God, oh God, he’s your everything, isn’t he? Isn’t he? Or is that just one more thing he’s convinced you of, tonight?

Selfish, selfish, fucking selfish, coming back for you. He’s made his point. He still proposes more.

You can’t keep your hands off him. Make up for the tightness in your voice. You wish you could relearn how to speak. He’s so free. You consider asking him how he learned to speak. 

You don’t.

* * *

 

The rumble of the distance is nearly unbearable.

You feel hollow. Drained. 

You see him when you close your eyes. The beat of his eyelashes. The freckles on his nose. The scars on every inch.

He was your schoolboy crush. He was guts and glory and the Great Experiment. He was the American dream. Your dream. He was a gunshot in the early morning. He was at home in your home, but starkly alone. 

He was a downpour from a blue sky. He was a warm winter day. He was a lily at dusk.

He was an enigma.

He was the reason your heart beat in your throat, he was the inferno that sent you floating to the treetops.

He was the sound of rain on the roof, he was your breath in the winter quiet. He was stolen glances. He was swallowed fire.

He was fucking unbreakable.

You suck in a breath.

You push it back out.

He is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> i agonized over this piece of shit so if you would leave your thoughts below it would really make my day!  
> [gll-vch.tumblr.com](https://gll-vch.tumblr.com)


End file.
